Open Poetry Reading
July 3, 2022 5-7 PM
and a free standing umbrella for comfort
Everyone is welcome! Bring a friend!
Sponsored by The Joshua Tree Folk School
Joshua Tree Retreat Center Cafe/Restaurant
a non-profit literary corporation
Our publications are available locally at Rainbow Stew, Space Cowboy, and Raven's Book Shoppe.
send your
poetry/short stories/photos/art/essays to editor@chollaneedles.com
Open Poetry Reading
July 3, 2022 5-7 PM
Cholla Needles
Open Poetry Reading
June 5, 2022 5-7 PM
Reviewed by John Krieg
Wild Spectacle: Seeking Wonders in a World beyond Humans
by Janisse Ray
Trinity University Press.
From the swamps of America’s southeast, to the forests of
Montana, to the still untrammeled wilderness areas of Alaska, south of the
border to mainland Mexico and the governmentally protected rain forests of
Costa Rica, Ray relentlessly searches
for the wild places and brings back the tragic story: they are fast
disappearing. She laments that she was
not born of another time, the time before European contact in America. A time when the vastness and diversity of nature
ruled and humanity, us, Homo sapiens was just another species in the grand scheme
of things, living amongst the other species; no better, no worse, just another
creature struggling to survive.
These are stories of innocent vulnerability intertwined
with strands of uncommon strength; intricately woven tales encompassing equal
measures of magic and passion. They
speak of what is still out there if you’re astute and bold enough to notice it. What does it mean to still be wild? It means to realize that nature is bigger
than you. That nature doesn’t need you. Wildness puts humanity in its place. Wildness
is awe. And, as she so eloquently states,
where nature is still undisturbed, unadulterated, and unmolested it is still
wild, it is in fact a wild spectacle:
I have, in my luckiest moments, lived heart-pounding
moments of wild spectacle (p. x).
Her essay about swimming amongst the manatees in the
Crystal River of Florida is not for the hard-hearted. It springs forth with kindness and the
essence of love – acceptance and tolerance of something different than
ourselves. These docile creatures, their
backs sliced and scarred by the props of
the motorboats of the callous and uncaring so-called apex species deeply moved
her. She communes with a mother manatee
and her calf:
Then I hear the manatee mother speak. She is beseeching me. “You must help us,” she says. “You must help us.”
I hear her distinctly: “You must help us.”
She turns, blows at the surface, nudges her baby, and
sinks away, back into the descension of the primitive river bottom. Something rises in me that has been rising
for a long time, and I break into the sentient air, dizzy, trembling, and blind
with love (p. 142).
This woman has courage.
Not the brazen reckless courage of the braggart or the fool, but the
calculated courage of knowing the risks and the odds against succeeding and
fighting through those misgivings and taking them on. She will write grants, volunteer her labor,
accept the kindness of likeminded nature lovers to get to the wild places. In the same vein as Annie Dillard before her,
Ray risks all to be in a position to write, to be able to go to where the story
is. She blocks out the white noise of the
manmade world to better interpret the wild one, the one which she prefers. A world that she wants to share with those
astute enough to understand that it has always been there and could be
again. In her acknowledgements, which
she terms “gratitude” she says as much:
My greatest desire is to enliven our culture,
cultivating and spreading ideas about a world beyond violence and destruction,
a wild and inclusive world, a world that is at our fingertips; and to offer the
possibility of transformation. I thank
those who keep their hearts open to all life (p. 194).
Janisse Ray is a marvelous contradiction of inherent grit versus raw emotion. This woman, tough as nails, is easily given to weeping over natural beauty, beauty rapidly disappearing, beauty lost. If that isn’t worth crying about, what is?
Click here for more information about Wild Spectacle
Also available:
Red Lanterns: Poems by Janisse Ray
Click here for more information about Red Lanterns
Reviewed by John Krieg
Deep Hanging Out:
Wanderings and Wonderment in Native California
by Malcolm Margolin
Heyday
Books.
If you want a jolt to any
complacency and smugness that you may have fallen prey to as a member of the
boomer generation, or if you’re a millennial seeking to know the unbridled
truth about the volatile European settlement of California, by all means, buy
this book. Know that sometimes the truth
really doesn’t set you free, but rather binds you to a sense of responsibility
and accountability. The truth can be heart
wrenching.
Margolin is white, Jewish, and
hails from Boston, Massachusetts. How would
anyone with those credentials become involved with Native Americans in
California? Well…he is also
compassionate, empathetic, generous, and imbued with a rock solid basic sense
of fairness that prods him to speak out
against injustice, and Eurocentric man’s treatment of indigenous peoples across
the globe ever since over oceanic exploration came to the fore is just about
the greatest injustice in human history.
It should also be noted that he moved to Berkley after graduating from
Harvard University while in his late twenties during the late 60’s at the
height of its revolutionary ethic while concurrently serving as the epicenter
of hippiedom. Back then peace and love
wasn’t just a popular saying, it was a way of life. Margolin still lives it and still lives in
Berkley.
Malcolm Margolin is a
journalist’s journalist. A journalist
strives to always have their boots on the ground where the story is unfolding. They don’t rely on television or secondhand
information, they have to be there, they have to hang out where the action is. So, just how deep is Margolin’s deep hanging
out? It started over 50 years ago and is
ongoing. He explains this endeavor in
his recently written introduction:
I’ve often explained my time
spent with California Indians as “deep hanging out.” The phrase has a connotation of hippie
casualness, but it was coined by anthropologist Clifford Geertz in 1998 to
describe anthropological research done via informal immersion in a culture, as
opposed to research done by conducting formal interviews and distanced
observations…
As a practice deep hanging
out very much corresponds to Indian ways of gaining knowledge. It is an older way in which you don’t pursue
knowledge as much as you put yourself out there with the hope that knowledge
will come to you. I learned much from
sitting on people’s porches, playing checkers with them, listening to their
stories, telling stories of my own. My
academic reflections come from hours spent in libraries reviewing
anthropological treatises, linguistic reports, and field notes. I’m proud of the research that I’ve been able
to do and very grateful for the trust and the access to their lives that Native
people have given me (p. viii).
Consider the wealth of
environmental diversity in California pre-European contact estimated to have
occurred in 1542. From the seacoast to
the deep forests to the interior plateaus to the salmon rich river valleys natural
food sources were readily available to those who lived a sustainable lifestyle
that never overexploited their source of sustenance. Deer, elk, and antelope abounded while flocks
of ducks and geese were so thick that they blotted out the sky. The botanical marvels of oak and mesquite
trees provided acorns and pods that could be stored in granaries throughout the
winter and feed an entire village. Statewide,
there were well over 100,000 Indians living lightly off the land which was a
lifestyle long ago abandoned by the European nations. The damage that was wrought upon the unsuspecting
indigenous inhabitants through oppression, diseases, and intolerance has been well documented ad infinitum
elsewhere, and while Margolin makes solid reference to it, his primary focus is
mainly on the living, on the restoration of cultures through a return to their
traditional customs and the redemption of their languages, many of which were considered
lost to history.
The depth and breadth of the
man’s intellect is on high display in his article entitled: Life in a
California Mission (1989) because it
answers the haunting question of why would the Indians have ever accepted
Spain’s mission system? Margolin
explains:
Part of what drew them was,
of course, the dazzle of Spanish goods. Guns, metal, cloth, exotic foods,
horses that obeyed people and bore them effortlessly and majestically for great
distances, cows that patiently gave them milk, carts pulled by stately and well-muscled
draft oxen, boats in full sail that came from beyond the ocean – these were,
for a people who had never conceived of such things, bewildering in their power
and beauty (p. 169-170).
This is a work filled with kind-hearted
admiration and understanding with an occasional undertone of remorse that is
quickly dispelled with ample examples of hope.
In short, it is an extraordinary and vitally important account of the
human spirit and the will to survive. In
the essay entitled Still Here (2019) the author humbly sums up his
life’s work through the publication of News from Native California:
As is obvious from the
listings in the very first issue, we didn’t create the cultural revival, we
reported on it and, in reporting, spread information about it from one
community to another. I’m proud of what
we did. In that age before the Internet,
many areas of California – especially rural areas - were isolated from one
another, spreading the news of how, in various communities, members of a
younger generation were, by and large on their own, reviving language, dance,
song, traditional arts, and skills, as well as spiritual practice, was a
laudable service (p. 246).
Malcolm Margolin has done a huge
service for not only the state’s original population, but for all Californians. Deep Hanging Out is a book that is well
worth hanging out with and referring to time and time again.